Solana urges early date for presidential election in Kosovo
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-27 10:23

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Thursday urged an early date for the presidential election in Kosovo to fill the political vacuum after the death of President Ibrahim Rugova.

Solana made the appeal while paying tribute to the late leader in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, according to news reaching here.

Other dignitaries attending the ceremony included Soren Jessen-Petersen, head of the UN mission in Kosovo, and Martti Ahtisaari, UN special envoy for Kosovo future status talks.

Speaking highly of Rugova for his peaceful pursuit of the rights for local people, Solana proposed Kosovo leaders open the election as soon as possible to ensure stability and talks on the future status in the troubled Balkan area.

"What came to my mind yesterday and also today is to see the vacuum that he leaves be filled by people with a sense of responsibility, with a sense of unity, with a sense of generosity for the people of Kosovo," said Solana.

Rugova led Kosovo's negotiating team in the province's future status talks, which were originally set for Wednesday in Vienna.

His strong leadership was seen as crucial in the talks and his death forced the United Nations to postpone until early February the first face-to-face talks between Kosovo's Albanian leaders and Serbia.

Kosovo Assembly Speaker Nexhat Daci is expected to be appointed as acting president of the province until the assembly chooses a new leader. But no political figures in Kosovo seem to enjoy the same prestige as Rugova among Kosovo's ethnic Albanians and internationally.

After winning Kosovo's parliamentary elections in 2004, Rugova's Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, although the largest party at that time, had to form a coalition government with other parties.

Kosovo, which officially remains a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been run by the United Nations and NATO since mid-1999, when the alliance drove out the forces of then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, accusing them of alleged human rights abuses in a crackdown on separatist Albanian rebels.